Opinion: Snow removal - then and now

Robert N. Wilkins, Special to the Gazette01.08.2013

Robert N. Wilkins is a Montreal historian and freelance writer.

Photograph on iPod of Notre Dame St., with inset of the same scene during a clearing of snow in about 1887, taken by Wm. Notman & Son Photo credit: McCord Museum Street clearing of snow was done manually, often by unemployed labourers who ran to city hall to compete for day work. Work was often given out to favourites of various local aldermen.McCord Museum

Snowclearing operations on Millar St. in St. Laurent in 1961. The process hasn’t changed much since then. Whereas there has been hardly any change from 1961 to 2011, there were huge changes from 1911 to 1961. In the Edwardian era, streets were cleaned using horse-drawn carriages, while sidewalks were the legal responsibility of residents.
/ Robert N. Wilkins

A postcard image of a winter scene on Montreal’s Mackay St., from the Edwardian era, shows the tremendous “hogbacks” or large mounds of snow resembling the backs of huge hogs. The hogbacks were created by residents’ shovelling of sidewalks and placing of snow on street curbs. In those days, residents were responsible for sidewalk snowclearing in front of their residences.
/ Robert N. Wilkins

MONTREAL — The record snowfall of Dec. 27 has prompted a great deal of debate about the approach used by Montreal and its boroughs to remove the snow from congested city streets and sidewalks. A cursory glance at letters to the editor in The Gazette in recent days clearly illustrates that while some are satisfied with the efforts made by the local authorities, many others are anything but. Discrepancies from one community to another in the rapidity of taking away the estimated 46 centimetres of snow do not help the state of affairs, either.

Snow has always fascinated Montrealers. When I was a child, now many years ago, my friends and I were thoroughly captivated with the whole mechanical operation of snow removal. We would, from all angles, follow snowblowers for hour after hour — much to the annoyance of those assigned to assure that the whole raucous business was accomplished without any unfortunate accidents. In those days, the snow was taken away using essentially the same methods with which we are more or less familiar today.

However, in the early years of the 20th century, the handling of snow removal was considerably different — and the end result was that even fewer people than now were happy with the results.

As late as the middle of the Edwardian period, the onus was on citizens not only to keep their own property clear of snow, but the public footways adjacent to it, as well. City hall changed that regulation in 1905, assuming responsibility for clearing the sidewalks located in most of the civic wards of the burgeoning city. However, as is the case today, many people were not satisfied with the job the municipal administration was doing, particularly with the length of time it was taking to get the work done.

Perhaps one of the biggest differences between snow removal today and the approach a century or so ago was in the nature of the labour force itself. Back in the day, a snowstorm was an opportunity for the many who were out of work to find, albeit temporarily, a paid job. Whenever flurries started to fall, hordes of unemployed men would show up at city hall on Notre Dame St. hoping to be chosen for a job that, in 1908, for example, paid 20 cents an hour. The selection of the lucky men was a major source of aldermanic patronage.

Once signed up, gangs of men would report to the city’s streets with shovels in hand. Accompanying them was a horse-drawn sled, known as a “pillbox sleigh” because of its diminutive size. The cart held a maximum of about 60 cubic feet of snow. Consequently, the process was agonizingly slow, particularly after a major blizzard. One frustrated letter-writer in 1907 angrily referred to the overall procedure as “dinky.”

Like today, Montrealers expressed their irritation in various ways. Unlike today, however, citizens in Edwardian times were occasionally willing to take matters into their own hands. In February 1905 the snowbanks — or “hogbacks,” as they were then known — were so high on Mackay St. that residents organized themselves to have them removed at their own expense. It was neither the first nor the last time that this was done.

It would seem that the removal of snow from our urban thoroughfares has a long and contentious history in Montreal. As is said so aptly in French: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”

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